This was published 1 year ago
Editorial
Public has right to know how prepared we are for war
Australians have been kept in the dark about the threat posed by China. Conventional wisdom in Canberra has been that Australia would have less than 10 years’ warning of war, but an expert panel assembled by The Age believes we need to be ready to fight within three years.
Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 14th National People’s Congress.Credit: Getty Images
The panel thinks fighting could come as early as 2026, should Chinese President Xi Jinping take the opportunity while the US and its allies are unprepared and distracted by the war in Ukraine, which has vacuumed up the Western world’s stocks of ammunition and military equipment.
The five-member panel for Red Alert, our in-depth examination of the most pressing national security challenges facing Australia, agree that China, Australia’s biggest trading partner, is far and away its most dangerous security threat.
Red Alert will roll out over three days, culminating in a joint communique including recommendations for action. While all the experts stressed they wanted peace, they said we needed to prepare for the possibility of war.
Australia’s more recent conflicts have been fought by small groups of professionals trained to the hilt in warfare, but the panel warned Australia needed to urgently strengthen its military and national security capabilities, and this is a responsibility of the whole nation rather than the military alone.
“Most important of all is a psychological shift,” they argue. “Urgency must replace complacency. The recent decades of tranquillity were not the norm in human affairs, but an aberration. Australia’s holiday from history is over.”
The series comes as the federal government considers the biggest defence shake-up in nearly four decades. In August, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appointed former Labor minister Stephen Smith and former chief of the Defence Force Angus Houston to conduct a defence strategic review.
Underpinning the new report is a 2020 strategic update that attacks on Australia could come with short notice – a big change from the assumption over the past 30 years.
The government is expected to use the confidential review to reshape the Australian Defence Force to counter China’s rapid military build-up and increased assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. Smith and Houston did not start from scratch.
It appears the Albanese government shares the high-level assessments set out in the previous government’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update including the need for new offensive capabilities and the long-overdue recognition we no longer have years of warning time for regional conflict.
The government is expected to release its response to the review next month, about the same time it reveals the type of nuclear-powered submarine Australia will acquire under the AUKUS pact with the United States and Britain. So, there is wide agreement on the strategic challenges we face. But there certainly isn’t agreement on the solutions.
The Red Alert panel not only believes the time frame for war has dramatically shortened, but conflict over Taiwan could drive war home to Australian shores for the first time in 81 years.
Such a scenario would possibly involve missile attacks on military facilities on the Australian mainland and cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. Up to 200,000 American troops could pull back to Australia as they flee US bases in Guam and Okinawa.
The review by Smith and Houston represents a huge body of work, as big as a white paper. But white papers usually take 18 months. Emphasising a growing sense of urgency, Smith and Houston were given just eight months. It has been conducted in secret. Even when published it will have been heavily redacted and sanitised with much withheld from public view.
Such reviews tend to deliver what the government of the day wants to be delivered. It is not accidental that defence reports throughout the decades have often specialised in the sort of opaque and anodyne uniformity that both assures acceptance and ensures no boats are rocked. Indeed, some reviews have a history of ignoring what needs to be done, instead presenting what governments have wanted to be done.
In publishing the Red Alert series, The Age believe that discussing Australia’s level of preparedness for war is responsible journalism and important for democracy.
Much of what is raised in our series is already common discussion around both the Australian Defence Force headquarters in Russell and the federal parliament. We simply wish to bring the public of Australia along with us in understanding the questions that confront our nation.
Patrick Elligett sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.